German Patent No. 4 034 683 describes a waveguide switch having a stator with four waveguide terminal pairs and a rotor in which the waveguide paths are present, joining at least two waveguide terminal pairs. The signal paths are switched by the rotation of the rotor (thus also rotation of the waveguide paths in the rotor).
To achieve acceptable electric function (matching, isolation), a high precision is necessary in manufacture of the stator and rotor, and for the combination of these parts in particular, only a very narrow gap is allowed between the stator and rotor, so that a very complicated precision bearing is usually necessary.
The waveguide switch according to the present invention is composed of two partial shells, each having the halves of the waveguide structure, in particular symmetrically, preferably produced by the milling technique. The corresponding xe2x80x9cswitch pathxe2x80x9d is set by a simple, electrically conducting septum, for example, by rotation or displacement.
No complex rotor/stator geometry is necessary. Furthermore, other switch configurations are also possible.
A waveguide switch according to the present invention may be composed of parts that need not be produced with an extremely high precision, so that production costs are much lower than with switches according to the related art. In addition, short switching times can be achieved, because the masses to be moved in switching are very small.